Solving the biggest problem with student awareness without spending anything.

This August, I completed 10 years of my life as an employability coach. All these years I kept on learning from students to understand their behaviour in procrastinating about learning and getting clarity about career options. After training 1,00,000 students from around 50+ colleges and 6 universities, I have realised a few critical issues with student awareness that need to be addressed.?

In this article, I am trying to discuss those issues and I appreciate your comments and suggestions on this so that we together can help our students and eventually our employability ecosystem.?

Students basically do not understand the following points and our educational system has failed to include them in the whole process:

1. Time is currency:?

A mediocre student from a private college never understands that time has a got value. Inherently they think they are time rich and can spend their time as they want. Eventually, they engage themselves in so many less productive activities for days, months and years.?

Most of their time is spent over fun, entertainment or chitchatting.

It is extremely important to teach them the value of time. Once they internalise that time is not a measuring quantity but a modern form of most effective currency, they will focus on spending time. This conscious effort about utilising time will certainly play a vital role in their career awareness.?

2. One should do it for cause and not for applause:

Almost in every situation, I found that 99% of students are more inclined to do something to impress someone. Maybe they are writing an assignment to impress the teacher, or they are doing a project presentation to impress a few peers in the class. They are trying to get decent grades to impress recruiters or parents.?

For every action, they expect validation from someone else. This is the most important emotional need. Although I agree and understand this may be acceptable to a certain extent, it is turning into a disaster in many cases. Most of the time this is the only reason for a self-destructing inferiority complex.?

WhatsApp status, Facebook Posts, Insta Reels, and Linkedin posts are some modern-age examples of the same syndrome.?

I feel teaching our younger generation to manage this sensitive, emotional attribute will enable them in their preparation for career choices.?

3. Education is all about investment which expects good returns.

Every student pursuing higher education should inculcate the very fact that education is never an expenditure. Most students are reluctant in spending money on this noble cause of learning and upskilling.?

I have never seen that kind of excitement in purchasing a genuine course as that of purchasing an electronic gadget or a movie ticket. This shift in mindset is extremely important to create awareness.?

Along with this one has to teach students to think of ROI after graduation. A student and his parents invest so much time and money for a very long time. After so many efforts and hustle, if a student is just planning to get a job of 4 LPA and that is too relatively non-technical seems unfair.?

I think; students’ awareness of these numbers will surely change their thought process towards all these things.?

I usually cover these points in my webinar "Anatomy of First Job", and try to make students more conscious about their career choices.

I would definitely like to have a quick discussion on this and understand your views.